Fatal fire at migrant centre follows mounting tension at US-Mexico border

After travelling thousands of miles across swamp and jungle, Juan and his family had finally made it to the US-Mexico border when armed men kidnapped them. They were taken with dozens of other migrants to a house in Ciudad Juárez, he said, where one managed to secretly call 911.

When the authorities arrived to rescue them, though, Juan and his family were taken straight to a migrant shelter. No one asked them for a statement, he said.

“Here the police and the rest are all working together,” said Juan, whose name has been changed to protect his identity. During several weeks in Juárez, out of fear he has only left the shelter once and is now waiting to cross into the US.

“When you think about it, the fear comes back, but hopefully our appointment comes up and we can get out of here.”

Juan and his family are among about 8,000 migrants currently in Juárez, a sprawling border city and low-wage export manufacturing hub south of El Paso, Texas. The city is on the front line of the chaos in the US asylum system.

Juárez has 23 migrant shelters in its network, up from just two in 2018. They are at or near capacity. It is now one of the most important cities on the 2,000-mile-long border for those seeking to get to the US.

A fire at a migrant detention centre in the city last week that killed 39 people and injured 28 others shone a light on how US pressure on Mexico to stop the crossings has had deadly consequences, rights groups said.

“Mexico continues to bear the brunt of US policies,” said Maureen Meyer, vice-president for programmes at the Washington Office on Latin America. “As a result of US policies that continue to dramatically limit access to asylum at the border, you see this back-up of people waiting for their chance to cross.”

The fire came after years of a confusing patchwork of US immigration policies, and as President Joe Biden faces heavy criticism from rights groups for continuing some of the harsh actions started by Donald Trump, his predecessor.

The Biden administration has said its measures both expand legal pathways and increase the consequences for those who do not follow the law and that the policy on Venezuelans has led to a dramatic drop in border crossings.

In the weeks leading up to the fire, Mexican authorities had been cracking down on the migrants in Juárez, aid organisations said. That meant raids in the centre of town, including in the cathedral where food and advice are provided for migrants. It also meant more limitations on temporary permits to remain, people said.

Viangly Infante, 31, whose husband survived the fire, said that Mexico was the worst part of their trek from Venezuela, including traversing the notorious Darién Gap jungle carrying a one-year-old baby.

“I would cross the Darién twice, up and down, again, rather than Mexico,” said Infante, who intended to take her husband with an oxygen tank across the border with her the next day.

Several migrants said they had been victims of extortion at the hands of local police or immigration officers on the route across Mexico. Many arrive in Juárez on a cargo train known as “The Beast”, risking injury or death riding on top or in freezing wagons.

“We went a day and a half without food,” Juan said.

Mexico’s INM migration authority said it had fired some 2,400 agents over abuses and human rights violations against migrants since President Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office in late 2018.

Mexico’s government has said its central concern is to increase protection for migrants and asylum seekers from a human rights perspective. It has also said Mexico and the US would expand their asylum policies.

Outside the detention centre, a stone’s throw from the US border, migrants had set up a vigil for the victims of the blaze, with signs calling the government murderers. López Obrador said migrants had started the fire in protest at being detained, and surveillance video from that night appeared to show that guards made no attempt to free the men as the centre burnt.

Mexico’s government is treating the case as a homicide and prosecutors said on Friday that five people had been arrested, including a migrant and immigration agents.

The fire came after more than a decade of efforts by Mexico to stop migrants as part of a complex relationship with the US that covers trade, drugs and guns. In 2019, Mexico took back asylum seekers under Trump’s policy known as “Remain in Mexico”, which forced them to wait out claims south of the border.

A pandemic-era order known as Title 42 made it impossible for most nationals to request asylum, with those crossing returned to Mexico. In October, the Biden administration announced that Venezuelans who crossed illegally would be returned to Mexico, in a deal done with Mexico’s federal government.

Oscar Ibáñez, Chihuahua’s state government representative in Juárez, said they found out about the change as the first group of Venezuelans was returned across the bridge. A common refrain from advocates is that the government makes deals, but few plans.

“A decision made in Mexico City and in Washington has consequences here,” Ibáñez said.

Migrants are scattered across Juárez in shelters, hotels and many on the streets waiting for an opportunity to cross.

“We receive between 800 and 1,000 people a day, today, every day, I don’t know how many there are, I can’t get my head around counting, it’s incredible,” said Cristina Coronado Flores, who runs the migrants programme in the cathedral for the Sociedad Misionera de San Columbano.

The city’s migration organisations are relatively co-ordinated. A central office right by a border crossing provides a kind of “one-stop shop” for migrants with non-profit, local and federal government and multilaterals in one place.

But despite those efforts, there are still fewer than 3,000 spaces in shelters and the city cannot control the migration caused by repressive governments and economic crises in the region.

Juan and thousands of other migrants now spend every morning refreshing an app created by US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) to make appointments for turning themselves in. Just 70 are released each day in the city, one person said.

Though the app has improved, many migrants complain that it crashes or they do not know how to use it.

CBP said it was in constant communication with non-profits and other stakeholders to address concerns and that it would keep improving the app.

Title 42 is set to expire in May. That could lead to more migrants arriving at the border, but advocates caution against trying to predict migration flows. Biden has enraged migration activists by proposing to deny asylum to most of those who passed through a third country en route.

“In the current political dynamic, it’s hard to see where we’re going to have any real comprehensive asylum system,” Meyer said.